I open this tale with an image. An image of me, twitching away in a corner as my daughter tells me that she simply can not do her homework on rivers. It is IMPOSSIBLE, she tells me. She has looked EVERYWHERE and can not find what she is supposed to be researching. The task her teacher has provided her with, which is to find out how rivers change the shape of the land, is an unreasonable task that she has NO CHANCE of achieving.
This child, my eldest, is an incredibly capable little human. She can cook entire meals from scratch. She can tell you the inner workings of the human anatomy. She has managed to work out the basics of coding, and can expertly navigate her way through any technological challenges when it comes to her iPad, or gaming. I could quite confidently say that should my husband and I suddenly pack our bags and leave (we’ve been tempted), she could last an entire week at least without any input.
So why, pray tell, when given the entire world wide web, is she unable to find one blumin fact about friggin’ rivers???
It’s quite simple really.
She simply. doesn’t. fancy. it.
I, using some wild witchcraft, take approximately 32 seconds to find several YouTube videos, a BBC Bitesize page, and numerous kids web pages all about the wonder that is rivers. I tell her to write a paragraph on it. Ten minutes later, she has written three words : ‘How Rivers Shape….” SHE HASN’T EVEN FINISHED THE BLOODY TITLE I TELL YOU.
While this is going on, my seven year old has lost her pencil for the seventeenth time this morning. Some time ago, she answered that 421-30 is 895. When I looked at her and said “so… when you look at that calculation, does that seem correct?”
She answered, “well yes, but now you’re looking at me like that, I’m not so sure!” That particular child has taught herself to French plait using YouTube videos and can tell you every horse breed that exists. Yet, when I ask her to find a pencil and her workbook she looks at me as if I’m asking her to conduct brain surgery on the dog using only her hair clips.
There’s a a five year old too. She’s “exceeding expectations for her age”, so I’m told. I say I’m ‘told’… With me, she has ignored the ‘phase three phonics picture to word match’ I asked her to do and is instead writing the word ‘POO’ over and over again.
Here’s the thing. The big reason why wine stocks are running low in supermarkets all over the country and why women in their thirties are eating themselves to early diabetes….
Your children behave way worse for you than they do for their teachers.
In scientific studies, it was found that children behave twenty million times worse for their parents than for adults outside of the home.
Ok, maybe that hasn’t been actually scientifically proven, per se. But there is some fact in it. It’s the real trouble with homeschooling, and why we all feel like we’re doing terribly at it. Somehow, our children can attend six hours of school and come home with achievement certificates and stickers and smiley faces. After six hours at the school of Mummy H, the only certificate we have is one certifying our entry into a facility of some sort.
I’m sure there are some of you reading this, feeling smug that you’re perfecting homeschooling and have spent your lockdown days like the Vonn Trapps, singing and congratulating yourselves on the achievements you have made, your children merry in all of the educational joy and wisdom you have imparted on them.
I’m rather suspecting that there are many, many more of you that are feeling stressed and worried that you are doing this allll wrrrooong.
So here’s to us. The ‘trying our best’ parents. Those of us that carry on, every day, trying to teach Phonics and The Stone Age and Rivers to children that would rather be seeing their friends or watching other kids play with toys on YouTube. Here’s to the ones that manage not to poke themselves in the brain with the pencils that our children are incapable of finding for the twentieth time this week. Here’s to the mums whose kids have magically forgotten how to count, to the Dads who are trying not to lose their cool as they remind their five year olds: “SOUND IT OUT, Don’t guess. M-A-T DOES NOT SPELL CARPET” If you’re doing your best, even if it’s not reaping the rewards, just keep going.
One day, this will all be over. Your children won’t remember how many facts they learnt about rivers. They won’t remember how many times they practised their phonics sounds. But they will remember you, and they’ll remember that in a world of chaos: you were doing your best. In your pyjamas.
The Ridiculous Mrs H 